Top Security Officials Ousted From Metro Transit

The new CEO of Bi-State Development has ousted the top two security officials at the Metro Transit agency.

File photo | Carolina Hidalgo | St. Louis Public Radio

The top people who handled security for the Metro Transit agency are out of a job.

Bi-State Development President Taulby Roach confirmed the departures on Friday but provided no other details, including the names of the two officials.

“We did this in response to what both our ridership and the public have been asking us to do, so that we can chart a new future and improve our service,” Roach said.

He said the changes should improve cooperation with law enforcement, including St. Louis and St. Louis County police.

“Changing the critical leadership positions always gives us an opportunity to work better with our partners,” he said. “And I’m hoping that this is a very strong signal to our partners, who we are already working with every single day, on how we can strengthen our relationships, so that we have better unified plans for deployment and increasing the safety and security and even comfort on our transit system.”

Roach emphasized safety on the system when he was introduced as the new president late last year. It rose to the forefront after a St. Louis County employee who was an innocent bystander to a dispute was shot and killed near the Grand Boulevard MetroLink station. That prompted the St. Louis County Council to trim funding for MetroLink until the agency and the St. Louis County Police Department presented a security plan.

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Bi-State Development named Taulby Roach as its next president and CEO today. Roach will take office Jan. 1, 2019, replacing John Nations, who is stepping down after eight years to return to private law practice. Roach has worked closely with Bi-State for more than 20 years on a variety of Metro Transit capital projects in St. Clair County.

At a crowded news conference at the Bi-State headquarters in downtown St. Louis, Roach said that he plans to change the organization’s focus.

The St. Louis County Council has voted to temporarily withhold some of the county money that goes to the region’s Bi-State transit agency in a quest to improve security on the MetroLink light rail line.

The council’s action is in response to various violent incidents in recent months on or near the rail line, including one that resulted in the fatal shooting of a county health department employee.

All six council members present Tuesday night voted in favor of a bill withholding $5 million from the county’s funding for Metro security. That’s a fraction of the county’s overall scheduled spending of $157 million this year to help fund all Bi-State transit operations.

Two homicides on or near MetroLink trains less than a month apart this year put crime on the transit system back in the spotlight, to the point that officials set aside $20 million for public safety and changed how the system that spans the Metro East and the St. Louis area is policed.

Those efforts and talk of adding turnstiles will mean nothing, however, if the people who ride the rails and buses don’t feel safe. Plus, closing off the system by adding turnstiles will take millions of dollars and several years.